Labor & Employment Law

Oct. 29: Student Day of Action Against Rite Aid

By James Parks

In eight cities across the country today, college students will visit their local Rite Aid drug store, not to pick up toiletries or prescriptions but to picket and protest the company?s persistent pattern of worker rights abuse.

The protests are part of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) national day of action against Rite Aid, the country?s third largest retail drugstore chain. USAS International Campaigns Coordinator Teresa Cheng says students are especially concerned about employee abuse at Rite Aid?s massive Southwest Regional Distribution Center in Lancaster, Calif., where 550 workers are in the sixth year of a struggle to join union and bargain a contract.

Student activists will hold actions today outside Rite Aid stores in State College, Pa;  Palo Alto, Calif.; Boston;  Los Angeles; Ithaca, N.Y.; Seattle; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Washington, D.C.

You can take action now. Click here to tell Rite Aid CEO John  Standley to stop cheating its workers on health care and to negotiate a fair first contract with its warehouse workers.

After the workers in Lancaster voted to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) two years ago, the union says the company retaliated with illegal layoffs and has refused to negotiate a reasonable first contract with these workers. Now Rite Aid wants to overcharge its workers by nearly 3,000 percent on their health insurance plan, workers say.

Rite Aid?s directors earn up to $100 million a year and pour money into busting unions, and yet they insist on ripping off workers by overcharging them on the health care they and their families need.

Last June, hundreds of Rite Aid workers and supporters from Pennsylvania, New York and California rallied outside the company?s annual shareholder meeting in Harrisburg, Pa., to demand good jobs and a voice at work.

During that rally, Sylvia Estrada and Angel Warner, two workers from the distribution center in Lancaster, described their five-year struggle to form a union.

We want to work with Rite Aid and grow this company. These jobs pay our bills. But we also want to be paid fairly and treated with respect.  For that, we need Rite Aid to reach an agreement with our union.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 29, 2010 (boomark / email).